The present invention relates to portable carriers for handling mounted devices. More particularly, the present invention relates to portable carriers and a chassis assembly for housing hot-plug connected hard disk drives.
Computer systems and information networks today require tremendous amounts of external data storage to satisfy user demands. To this end, mechanisms have been developed for housing multiple hard disk drives for storing large volumes of data. A recent advance in this field has been the introduction of xe2x80x9chot swappablexe2x80x9d disk drives that may be added to or removed from a disk drive chassis or xe2x80x9ccagexe2x80x9d while power is being supplied to other disk drives in the cage. This configuration is also commonly referred to as xe2x80x9chot plugxe2x80x9d connected disk drives.
Prior disk drive carriers for hot swappable disk drives suffered numerous disadvantages. These disadvantages included the problem of electromagnetic interference between adjacent hot-swappable hard disk drives. For example, when numerous hard drives are stacked within a single computer chassis, magnetic waves generated from one hard drive may interfere with the operation of another drive. This can result in undesirable effects ranging from a decrease in system performance to a complete system crash and corresponding loss of data.
In addition to interference from neighboring drives, there is also a risk of electromagnetic interference from the other internal components of the computer itself. As the speed at which integrated circuits within computer systems continues to rise, so does the problem of increased electromagnetic dissipation from those circuits. Accordingly, it would be desirable shield the hot-swappable hard drive from electromagnetic interference from other drives as well as from integrated circuits within the computer system. Conversely, it would be desirable to shield other components within the computer from potential electromagnetic interference dissipated by the hard drive itself.
Another disadvantage associated with prior disk drive carriers is that prior art drive carriers were susceptible to rotational vibrations caused by the drives they contained. Accordingly, hard drives became unseated too frequently during operation using prior art systems. As such, a more secure locking mechanism is needed to handle the increased vibrations resulting from the newer and faster hard drives.
Finally, as the speed and performance of hard drives continues to increase, so does the problem of increased heat dissipation. This problem is even more attenuated in systems with numerous hot-swappable hard drives located within a single computer chassis. Accordingly, it is desirable to provide an inexpensive and efficient method to alleviate the problem of increased hard drive heat dissipation.
Disclosed is a hard disk drive carrier adapted to be housed in a disk drive chassis comprising a drive bay for receiving and holding a hard disk drive; an integrated locking mechanism including a handle for carrying the disk drive carrier and for providing a one-handed locking mechanism for locking and unlocking the disk drive carrier in the disk drive chassis; and an EMI shield fixedly coupled to the drive bay for providing a barrier to electromagnetic interference, the EMI shield covering a portion of the hard disk drive.
Also disclosed is a hard disk drive bay including opposing sidewalls for securing a hard disk drive into a chassis comprising a primary locking mechanism, the primary locking mechanism comprising first and second swing arms each pivotally coupled to said drive bay at a first pivot point and pivotally coupled to a handle at a second pivot point; and a secondary locking mechanism disposed on one or both of said opposing sidewalls, the secondary locking mechanism adapted to interface with corresponding locking elements disposed on the hard drive chassis.